After giving you the map of the valley, Teldorthan advises you to visit another inn, where the family of the missing dwarf is waiting. He mentions that there are other opportunities that may be available in the scar there.

Heading to the meeting place, you enter the room, where you see two distinct groups of people: a small group of dwarves, who are obviously grieving, and a slightly larger group of similarly dressed humans, who are having a heated discussion. Neither group notices your entrancePlease discuss you next action in the discussion thread and post what you will do next here

Durzo slips into a chair near the animated humans. This poses no problems, as they seem to have imbibed quite a bit. They also are too involved in their own conversation to notice anything else.This is what he hears:human 1"... I dunno, but that much gold sure would go a long way"H2 "Are you daft? Even though the tales are farfetched, you can't argue that people have been disappearing. Even if there isn't some half crazed halfling Torog priestess doing..."H3 "They are NOT tales. Things have been seen. Horrible things. There have been... experiments"H1 "Enough. The fact remains that it is Avandra's will that this cursed temple be destroyed. The gold is just a bonus"All together "All hail Avandra"

Once Busty starts talking to the humans durzo is going to slip out and talk to the stable hands to see if he has any information on when the humans arrived and when they plan to leave. Then assuming its dark enough to be done without notice I'll climb about a bit and case the rooms of the inn. If anything looks promising, and unguarded I'll break in and take a look (and maybe swipe a few things) if not I'll return to my ale and wait to ease drop again once Busty has stopped her questioning.

As your party is dithering, and busty is giving herself a healthy glow, one of the dwarves comes up to you."you must be the group of adventurers my brother told me about. I can tell by that busty, glowing mage over there. Perhaps you can help us. One of our clan, scoot coobler has foolishly tried to gather the reward put out by trying to take down that crazed Morgana. As you may know, it did not go well. He ventured out yesterday. We would make it worth your while if you were able to return him to us alive.I must warn you... you may not have heard of Morgana, not being from around here. By all accounts, she was a normal halfling priestess. That is, until she ventured out to the cursed valley and found a piece of the evil meteor that has plagued us. Since then, humans, halflings and dwarves have all gone missing at regular intervals. There was one halfling who was able to escape and lived long enough to tell a horrid tale of experiments, and attempts to create homonculi, often with disastrous results.There is rumor that morgana has convinced several humans and other creatures to join her cause"

Your intrepid group ventures into the cavern. After alerting the guards, Rukt easily bashes the door in. Durzo rushes the first two clay scouts he sees and attacks with his never missing/maximum damage blades. Rukt see this and goes to aid him. Through the clay scouts psychic trickery, Rukt mistakenly swings at Durzo for a mighty blow. Durzo decides at that point to abandon Rukt to his one vs one encounter with the clay scout.The rest of the party heads further into the cavern to engage the remaining clay scout and stonefist defender. However, due their general incompetence, they are taken down without difficulty. The hand of Torog, a one handed knoll, bursts in and clears the way for the mutant arbalaster. Despite the tremendous attack bonuses, the mutant arbalaster is fairly useless.The party succeeds with its strategy of sending nook and jukka in as nonthreatening blockers, while durzo kills everything, busty damages from afar, kallista marks everything in sight, and rukt has a personal showdown.They come away with a magical +1 hammer with earthquake ability

a note about the homonculi:There's something wrong with them. They've been altered by weird magic-they glow with blue light and their parts don't fit together properly

You venture south past the bodies of your fallen enemies, to the east is a set of open double doors. Looking through them, the symbol of Torog glares at you from the other side of a large cavern. Painted on the wall in a dark pigment, this 15 foot tall symbol graces the stone wall of a building. There's no sign of motion in the cavern, except for the pulsing green light that comes from the bottom of the cavern, filling the cave. From what you can see, the chasm is filled with mushrooms of all sizes, many of them glowing with phosphorescence. It smells terrible. As you peer across, you hear a muffled scream from the building featuring the symbol of Torog. It has no doors or windows that you can see, but a coarse rope bridge stretches across the chasmAs you peer into the chasm, you can see pieces of corpses and skeletons scattered on and through the mushrooms at the far base of the wall, as if someone had thrown bodies across the edge. The chasm itself is 35 feet deep. The rope bridge appears sturdy, and is about 20 feet above the bottom in the middle.

Tying a rope to Durzo, he rushes across the bridge, expecting the worst. As he reaches the halfway point, he hears a scrape from the south side of the rough stone building. Another blue homonculus flaps awkwardly into view, along with a lurching blue creature made entirely of blue stone. Humans in blood-splattered gray robes bearing the symbol of Torog follow around the south corner of the building, carrying bows. One screams "turn back fools! Torog gives us strength, and you can never defeat our might. You will be laid low before the King Who Crawls!

With that the battle ensues, the human archer minions are horrible shots. they are effectively boxed in by the adventuring party, while Busty's incendiary orb effectively demolishes the group. Nook continues his clumsy ways, but is an effective meat shield. Durzo continues his streak of never missing a target. The last remaining archer, awed by the party- tries to gain entrance back into the building, but the door is effectively barred. The party is considering using intimidation tactics, but Jukka comes from behind for the final killing blow.

You prepare yourselves for the next battle behind the door, as chanting gets louder, and the screams are getting weaker...

Th party huddles together in front of the temple's entrance. Rukt easily bashes in the door, bearing witness to a macabre scene- recently made homonculi, flying witherlings and Morgana staring across the room with a low ceiling (obviously an homage to the king who crawls). Morgana speaks few words of encouragement, and a thick toxic smoke pours from the room to fill the space just outside the doors. Durzo rushes in to combat the human minions, and Busty follow suit to tend to the dying Scoot in the corner. Morgana's lackeys prove to be fairly inept with their weapons, including the fat "scalpel"- her main torturer. But the stream of witherlings seems never-ending. Slowly the ranks of evil get decimated. Even nook gets in some hits, killing two minions in 1 round. Only Morgana is able do any damage, with her area of effect power "kneel before Torog". Soon she sees the light, and starts to run. You catch up to her easily. She sees a chance to do a final attack with the potential of doing serious damage to 4 of your party, but Kallista's dark aura saves the party from further damage (and possible rendering 2 members unconscious). While poring through her possessions (including gold, an alchemical formula and a chaos shard), the party hears an ominous sound coming from outside the temple.

As the noise outside subsides, and the party is trying to figure out what to do, Drawoc bursts through the secret door leading to the surface.He has a gleam in his eye as he says "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of bubble gum. And I don't care how many of you go down."The party makes his way out to the temple entrance, where Durzo is the first to lay eyes on the advancing myconids. His high rolls remain in effect, unfortunately he becomes the first casualty. The 4 myconids advance on the party, using their area of effect powers to full effect. Nuke hides in the room, caring for scoot. Jukka and Rukt face the brunt of the attacks. After trading blows, and the loss of Durzo, Busty begins to rethink the encounter, and notices that they are particularly interested in the chaos shard. He gives it up, and the myconids begin to retreat. Drawoc, seeing his chance, continues the battle. The extra turn gained from half the myconids retreating is beneficial, as the party is triumphant after losing half their members.

You return to the town, spoils in tow. The dwarven family is grateful, as is the temple of avandra. Your rewards will be listed in a different post.